on smaller states

When the U.S. American states were created, their populations were far smaller than they are today. In the centuries since this nation's inception, it has acquired areas legally, annexed territories by force, bought a region or two, and stolen vast tracks of landscape from numerous First People tribes. Most often, these regions were first broken down into manageable sizes before being given names and assigned stars on the flag. If they had been incorporated at their original sizes, we would now have one state reaching from Baton Rouge to Bismark and another from San Diego to Seattle. Instead of one state legislature and one governor answering to a hundred million people, today's much smaller states allow more people to have a greater role in determining for themselves the course of their lives. In this instances, as in a number of others (think babes, booze, and brats), more is better, and more states would lead to better lives for everyone alive today as well as for the many generations yet unborn. (Immediately, the author objects to his own argument on the grounds that, in the long run, more babes or booze or brats rarely make a person's life better.)

If, for example, we were to split California into three different states (northern coastal, southern coastal, and inland), the populations living in these areas could more effectively band together for the protection and propagation of their own interests instead of being tethered to societal groups with whom they have little in common. Furthermore, a smaller state would allow for greater and more fruitful citizen participation in society: in his lifetime, a man could get to know most everyone in a smaller community and create bonds with the few hundred thousand people living therein, whereas the idea of casually meeting and mingling with everyone in a state of 30 million (plus) souls is unfeasible to the point of being absurd. Today's Californian who desires to become acquainted with all of the people whose driver's licenses resemble his faces a daunting and nearly insurmountable challenge; dispirited and perplexed, he retreats behind the all-too-penetrable defenses of his meager abode and purees his mind watching seven hours of television a day.

As to the preferred size for new states, we humans already self-segregate by moving to cities with greater frequency and in larger numbers. City-sized states would allow for more efficient use of a political representative's time: if his constituents numbered in the two hundred thousand, he might feasibly speak to each one of them at least once a year (by addressing large gatherings of them at public events), whereas, today, governors and legislators struggle constantly with the challenge of trying to speak to even a small fraction of the people whose lives they are supposed to be governing let alone for whom they are expected to draft legislation impartial and beneficial to all. In addition to allowing for a better allocation of resources, reducing the population sizes of states by splintering them into more and smaller entities would provide greater political power to people not living in cities; it would negate situations we currently face in which the voices of far-flung rural residents are drowned out by the opinions of massed and motivated urbanites. The author fears, however, that we U.S. Americans must crawl to the end of the rabbit hole we have already entered and continue to suffer in brazen exacerbation the current trend of Homogenization To Enhance Corporate Profits that piggybacks on the disenfranchisement of great masses of citizens until such time as we come to recognize it for its dangerous and inherent inhumanity, and rid ourselves of it peacefully, and for good. Mahalo.

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